Counterfeit
by ArgentNoelle
Summary: The Demon and the Earl: take 2. [mangaverse, though with bits of anime thrown in—major character death at beginning of story]
1. The End

spoilers for the manga, namely the character who appears that year when everyone stands in the hallway

other warnings: noncon, hurt/no comfort, Ciel being nasty, major character death (happens at the beginning)

* * *

An eerie silence descends. On the hill that has become their battlefield, Ciel, and his brother, and Sebastian all stop short in something like surprise at how suddenly that reapers' scythe has been used against its owner. Sebastian looks down at his shaking hands with confusion that turns slowly to a triumphant smile, and the reaper himself looks at the bloody mess of his stomach and the cinematic record drifting its way into the air, bathing him and the demon in an eerie, white-blue glow, blinding.

"Oh," Undertaker says.

Sebastian steps back, his feet almost giving out, blood congealing thickly in his own wounds, the tiredness of an endless day hitting him with full force as the adrenaline that has filled his body for so long leaves in a rush of giddiness, making him lightheaded. _The Reaper is dead_.

Undertaker takes a stumbling step; clutches his stomach, almost trips over his own fallen scythe. They watch him, none saying a word; none expecting that in his last breath he will pull the living boy toward him and with his other hand take from his robe the small training scythe that had once belonged to Othello, and in that selfsame movement stab the child, take the scythe and twist it into his belly.

The turning of reels is deafening, now. Behind it is the hum of electricity, and the whole air around it is charged.

Ciel calls his brother's name; stumbles forward and is halted in his tracks. Sebastian stares, his eyes wide, his hand outstretched.

"You failed… your directive," Undertaker laughs, in a choking mix of vomit and blood. "At least his soul… is safe…"

He falls.

Sebastian knows it is true. Has felt the thin bond of their contract pull taut and snap between them—he has not protected the young earl as he promised; the unfinished contract is void. He is no longer Sebastian—yet what else can he be?

The young master is stumbling, gazing toward him, still in some shock; one blue eye, one purpled and ruined, but the star that had once glowed, carved onto its surface, is gone, and there is no answering tattoo on his own hand.

Yet still he catches the young master in his arms while the child takes his last breath. There is betrayal in that gaze along with the surprise, and perhaps regret too, but it is all clouding over, too fast, too unutterably fast. Sebastian wants to say so many things, wants to make this right, but he has no power to heal; certainly not to heal a wound from a death-scythe.

"I swear," he says, without thinking, and he is surprised, distantly, to notice his own voice shake, "that I will complete your revenge."

The boy's eyes show some surprise. "Even... still?" the words pain him, and he coughs, and the only thing Sebastian can do is hold him close, feeling the warm living flesh and the blood, the soul that is pulling its way ever freer of the mortal confines—but not his to have any longer. Time is growing short.

"What kind of a… butler would I be," Sebastian says, "if I could… not…" he breathes in harshly, and the young master reaches up to his face.

"Seb...seba…"

Neither of them finish.

/

Ciel falls to his knees, uncomprehending. None of this was supposed to happen—this wasn't part of the plan at all—Undertaker had promised to save his brother. They were supposed to win. And now—

The demon that holds his brother's body keens, face pressed close against it, hands holding tight. Ciel could not get close, even if he dared—even when it is his own brother who has now died. He can't fathom it. But the sound of that hollow cry unsettles something deep under his skin, makes him feel nauseous with disgust: he presses his hands to his own ears and closes his eyes, wondering if, perhaps, if he wishes hard enough, this will be nothing more than a dream in Undertaker's coffin, if the lid will soon be taken off and the kindly old mortician will peer down at him and crooningly sing _good morning, dear Ciel_.

It's the only kind of wish he has left in him; it has been so long since he remembered what it felt like to be in mother and father's arms.

.

.

.


	2. Rites of the Dead

"Where are you taking him?" Ciel asks. Sebastian is standing up, cradling the body close, and is walking—past the silent dead; past Tanaka, crumpled to the ground, and the jumbled, soot-stained rubble, the remains of the blast which had taken out the rest of Undertaker's troops, and Bard with it.

He doesn't think Sebastian will answer, but after an eternally long moment, he speaks.

"Home."

Finny drives the carriage, Mey-Rin beside him, and neither Ciel nor Sebastian mention the sound of weeping that comes from that seat.

Inside the carriage, Sebastian sits with the body still held to him, and he doesn't look away; doesn't any more acknowledge Ciel in the carriage; and Ciel himself cannot speak. He wants fervently to tell the demon to release his brother, but he knows it would be useless.

He remembers the way his brother had gazed up at the demon as he died; the damned trust—no, acceptance—in his face and voice; he hadn't even spared a thought for Ciel beside him, his own brother. Sebastian had mattered more to him than even his family—throughout their whole battle, and at its end.

Ciel feels that white-hot, shaking anger fill him, anger at his brother, anger at the demon, and under that is terror, terror and exhaustion. He can hardly stomach to watch the demon and yet he cannot look away; finds himself drinking greedily in the tenderness of his cradled arms and the care in his expression.

It's not _right_.

That should have been _his_ place, his and no one else's. Even in his brother's death, his twin still mocks him.

Ciel wants to touch his brother's hand, but he cannot. In the seat opposite, he only curls up, and falls into a daze; half-awake, half-asleep, aware of the rattling jolts of the carriage, of the rough uneven breaths of the demon, of the emptiness. His brother's body holds no soul, and the absence makes his body seem unreal.

He has tried not to notice, has tried to play the part of human to perfection, but the difference is so profound and striking that he cannot bear to dissemble about it now. He has grown used to the feel of his brother's soul, the soft reminder of his life, that which his other half had so easily kept, even as he bargained it away. Ciel had dreamed, in confused fashion, of holding that spark closer, bringing it within, through his skin and into the spaces of his heart so they would never be parted again. He had always woken with horror and anger from those dreams, and it had been so easy to treat Undertaker disdainfully then, for making him into a monster.

Now he cannot care if it makes him a monster, if only he could feel that soul in the other seat, instead of only emptiness and void.

/

In the manor, Sebastian takes the stairs, still holding the young master, and goes to his room. He lays the young master on the bed, as though he were sleeping, but the image is ruined by the blood and entrails, the damage to his new suit. Sebastian wants to find a better suit, an unstained one, something that will flatter the boy instead of making him seem so small, but the space between bed and wardrobe seems cavernous, and he cannot let go of the body. He fears that if he lets go, it will disappear—or perhaps he will, drawn inexorably back into the depths of hell.

He has never been able to remain on earth without a working contract before.

If he turns his back, even for a moment, he will never see the child again, that is clear enough; that is the only clear thing in the suddenly clouded world. He cannot let go of him. The thought fills him with terror.

Terror has been a stranger to him, but in this last year it had introduced itself, cordially, and then remained, though it was nothing but unwelcome. Now it has cast out every other feeling, every consideration of aesthetics; he is undone.

Sebastian crawls onto the bed beside the body and holds on. He will stay here because he cannot do anything else.

It is the only thing to do.

/

Even in winter, there is only so long before a decaying body becomes rank.

Ciel's anger and bitterness come to a head one morning as he crashes his goblet onto the table with a dull thud that makes the blood slop over the side. At the edge of the room, Mey-Rin hovers uneasily, wringing her hands. It is the sort of improper behaviour that Ciel ought to chide the servant for, but he cannot bring himself to. All the other times he has tried merely made her say, shakingly, "of course, sir," but did not stop her nervousness, or the tears that would ofttimes slip from beneath her glasses.

"And what of Sebastian?" he asks, cuttingly, into the silence.

Mey-Rin jumps. "I'm sorry, sir?" she says, in a shaking voice.

"Has he moved?" Ciel says.

"No, sir."

Of course he hasn't. It would have been foolish to presume that somehow, between his descent to the dining room this morning and the serving of breakfast, the former butler would have decided to leave the room and the body he has not left for days. The smell had followed Ciel down the hall. He knows what corpses smell like, look like, how they behave as they become less and less like humans and more and more like only things. He has had much experience with it, being brought up as he has been, among them. He is surprised to find that he's gained a sensibility, that of all the things to offend him it is that Sebastian has not bothered to prepare the body and bury him properly. It would have been the respectful thing to do.

Undertaker would have understood.

Undertaker's corpse is probably still lying on the hill; unless the reapers have taken him to give him whatever rites they give their own.

He gets up, drains the rest of his glass—he has no intention of fainting of exhaustion, as he is fairly certain none of the servants would even attempt to revive him—and stalks out of the room, up the stairs.

He flings open the door to his brother's bedroom, steps inside, looking disdainfully down at the demon lying there, and says harshly, "get up, Sebastian. I've had enough of you."

With effort, the demon opens his eyes, looks from Ciel to the body in something like confusion, before the memory visibly crashes over him. He turns away, but Ciel steps forward.

"I said, get up. This is an order. You're going to make yourself presentable, and you're going to talk to the other servants, and you are going to come back here only when I say so. Do you understand me?"

Sebastian makes a dry sound, like a cough and a laugh, but it has no humor in it. "I understand you, Phantomhive," he says. "But perhaps you forget, I don't serve you and I never will. Leave."

Ciel slaps him. His fury is boiling over—at Sebastian's insolence and selfishness, and Sebastian's very presence, when he ought to have disappeared the moment the soul was no longer his to consume.

Sebastian blinks in surprise.

"Get out or I will kill you myself," Ciel says, and pulls out the small scythe that had killed his brother, and which he had taken from the ground where it had fallen, knowing it was barely worth keeping, but knowing that the weapon would be his regardless.

Sebastian stares, with slight disinterest, that turns suddenly to bitterness. "You dare to bring that here," he says dully.

"I dare," Ciel says. He pushes the blade under Sebastian's chin, watches the way the demon's eyes follow it. "Now, are you going to let me kill you so pathetically, or are you going to obey me?"

"What do you mean to do with him," Sebastian says in a hoarse whisper.

"Bury him," Ciel says. "Properly."

At last, Sebastian nods. He gets up, slow and careful, as Ciel brings back the blade, and leaves the room with heavy steps.

Then Ciel is alone with his brother's body for the first time.

He sits down.

"You continually abandon me," he says. First he lived, abandoning Ciel to death; and now he has died, abandoning Ciel to life—or a simulacrum of it. His mouth twists, and he can hear the nasty pettiness in his own voice. "That was always what you wanted most, wasn't it? To get away from us all. Even me, when I had done nothing but love you. Did your own ambitions matter so much to you that you would choose them over family?"

He closes his eyes, and rubs a hand across his brow. "Dearest brother, what can I do now that you are gone? I have nothing left…" his voice cracks, and if he were still able to cry, he think he might feel tears gathering in his eyes; but he has not cried since his death, and he feels self-loathing at his own broken response.

He reaches to the bell-pull, and when Finny runs up a moment later, staring in sick horror at the body, Ciel is already standing, and the death-scythe is hidden away in his jacket once again.

"Run a bath, would you, Finnian?" Ciel says, and at last the gardener tears his eyes from the body to stare stupidly at Ciel. Ciel sighs. "I said," he says slowly, "run, a, bath."

Finny swallows. "Yes, sir," he says at last, in a very small voice. He is crying now, and Ciel resents the boy more than ever. But he says nothing as Finny pulls out the tub and brings up buckets of water.

Ciel lays his brother's body on the floor beside the tub while he takes off the old clothes, and carefully washes him. Finny hovers in the doorway until Ciel sends him off in search of what is needed.

It is easy, now, to move the body, for the rigour mortis has already ceased. Undertaker's shop, though abandoned, has not been touched, and when Finny returns with the cases of tools and jars of formaldehyde Ciel is waiting; he injects the artery to begin embalming, massaging the body and paying close attention to the progress of the chemicals through the veins. He is so focused on his task that it takes him some time to notice Finny standing sickly in the doorway; Ciel looks up and says, quietly, "this will take some time, Finnian, there's no need to stay."

Finny nods quickly, looking greenish, before backing out the door and closing it behind him.

It _will_ take some time, Ciel knows—and he has to pause frequently and remind himself of the proper order; he's viewed this but never prepared a body himself.

When at last the jars nearby are filled with the dark liquid, and he has suctioned everything he can from the hole the death scythe has made, and filled the body with formaldehyde, he takes a break, feeling dizzy. He sips distractedly from one of the jars of blood—his brother was, after all, a Sirius, and he knows it will not make him sick. At last he returns to touch up the body, injecting a few more places here and there by hand. He poses his brother's eyes closed and sews his mouth into a careful line, _just like he's having a nice rest, yes_, he can almost hear the ghost of Undertaker's voice behind him say. Ciel takes a shaky breath and says quietly, "if you hadn't killed him, I wouldn't have to do this…"

He understands why Undertaker had. He remembers that moment when his own soul was taken—and nothing after that, until a long time later, when he was reborn in the land of the dead. He understands that that was the fate Undertaker wanted to save his brother from, and yet—he _hadn't_ been dead, he had been alive, and could have been for a long time. Ciel can't agree with the idea that his brother should have died sooner, just to save the fate of his soul.

He stitches up the wound the death-scythe has left, as well as he is able, and when that is done he cleans and puts away every tool back into its battered case. It has taken a long time—he has worked through one whole night and into the next day, and in the morning he picks out one of his brother's suits and carefully dresses him, ringing the bell once more so that Finny can bring the coffin.

It is his own coffin, the one made specifically to their measurements. Ciel drinks again from the jar of his brother's blood, but he is still trembling with exhaustion.

Sebastian brings in armfuls of white roses, which he sets carefully around the body, and then he, Ciel, Finny and Mey-Rin have a wake.

He wishes they had thought to bring Tanaka; but the hill is far, far away now. Perhaps, Ciel thinks, he would understand that none of them had thought of it; not because they didn't care, but because thinking had been impossible.

Though there are only four of them, the order of the line still holds some battles; at last, Ciel stands to his brother's right, Sebastian to his left, with the other two behind him, though Ciel has to clench his fists to keep from spitting that Sebastian isn't family and never was. After, they carry the coffin—Sebastian, and Finnian, who are easily able to keep it aloft; and before them goes Ciel, and behind them goes Mey-Rin, and they walk to the family grave-yard, where the empty plot beside their parents with his brother's name on it has been re-opened, and where he is interred.

Ciel has kept back a lock of his brother's hair, as has Sebastian; the demon has already made his into a locket shaped into the star that was their contract. Ciel keeps his in his pocket, and touches it fitfully, unsure of what he will do with it, not ready to encase it under glass.

.

.

.


	3. Doppelgänger

notes: references to the Red Valentine event :)

very general description/references of noncon, dubcon + Ciel's memories

* * *

His brother has made negligible progress on finding the ones who arranged their parents' deaths, these three years. Ciel has ample evidence, from Tanaka, of what his brother _has_ been busying himself with—running the estate, managing the people on it, running errands for the Queen, all done with admirable tenacity and persistence, which Ciel himself cannot fathom—but of the killers, there are no clues, not even the beginnings of a trail.

"Did he even _want_ revenge?" Ciel says at last, scowling and throwing himself back into the chair in his study. "It seems he's done little, and you even less."

Sebastian, before him, says merely, "he thought the most prudent course of action would be to wait until the perpetrators went after him, which he suspected would be the case."

"Of course," Ciel nods. "Of course. And after three years of that _not happening_, he didn't change his tactics? I thought he was an investigator!"

"He was a brilliant investigator," Sebastian says coldly. "And a remarkable, intelligent human being; traits that do not seem to run in the family."

"Ah, Sebastian," Ciel says, leaning forward sweetly, lacing his fingers under his chin. "Are you trying to insult me? That's hilarious. All it shows me is that you're willing to remain my brother's dog even after his death—not that it wasn't already _abundantly_ clear."

Sebastian bares his teeth. "A dog, Phantomhive?"

"Why of course, _Sebastian_," Ciel says.

"Then lest you forget, I am on no one's leash but my own, any longer," Sebastian says. "Tread carefully before you risk my ire."

Ciel only sighs. "You won't kill me," he says boredly. "You hate me enough that you would have already, if you were going to—I'm not even properly alive in the first place. But I look like him, and so you suffer me. I, on the other hand, need you only insofar as you help me to complete my brother's revenge—and I know that means more to you than anything. You won't kill me, and you won't leave: you've let me see your cards, you know, and they are a worse hand than mine; we both know it. So don't give me empty threats; they tire me."

Sebastian's face twists, before settling into a look of pure loathing. "Everything does, it seems." He turns then, and sweeps out of the room before Ciel can reply, and in the silence after the demon is gone, Ciel tries to think, wonders who the killers could be—but it is to no avail.

/

It snows on Ciel's birthday, and Sebastian makes a chocolate cake—his brother's favorite. There is a pall over the whole proceedings, and it is not even because the only two people to taste the cake are Finny and Mey-Rin.

He wishes, with a sudden intensity that surprises him, that his brother could be there and alive, to make the whole semblance brighter, even if that meant he himself were dead.

Sebastian stares at the cake as though it is an omen, as though the cake is itself spitting recrimination in his face. He makes it through almost the whole dessert before finally dashing the half-eaten thing onto the ground with his fist, breaking the plate, and everyone startles.

"Mr Sebastian?" Finny asks at last. "Are you all right?"

It is an idiotic thing to ask.

None of them are all right.

"How could I be so foolish?" Sebastian says.

For a moment, no one dares respond to the pronouncement, said so vehemently. At last, Mey-Rin says, "it was a good cake, Mr Sebastian, it was," and reaches toward his arm, but her hand falls tremblingly short of touching him.

"Just because of three year's habits, I can't help myself," Sebastian says. "There's no need for this—any of this…" he waves one arm, encompassing the fallen cake, the table, Ciel himself and the whole manor.

"Then leave," Ciel says cuttingly. "We neither want nor need you here."

"Sir!" Mey-Rin gasps, looking affronted, while Finny says hotly, "that's not true! We all need Sebastian!"

"No," Sebastian says. "Ciel is right. I failed… I lost everything."

"Not everything," Mey-Rin says, tears coming to her eyes, and now she _does_ reach Sebastian, clinging onto his arm. Ciel expects Sebastian to shake her off, the pathetic way she is acting, for he can't imagine it pleasant to be blubbered on by the clumsy maid, but Sebastian only stands very stiffly before something seems to go out of him, and he wraps one arm around her. At that, Finny springs forward as well and hugs Sebastian from the other side, and the two servants make such a noise and racket weeping and wailing that Ciel finds his opinion of them moving even lower.

His opinion of Sebastian, he thinks, cannot get lower at all.

"I used to think a hundred years was like the blink of an eye," Sebastian says quietly. "But it seems a day… can sometimes be longer."

Finny sniffles, and agrees, while Mey-Rin's wailing redoubles.

Sebastian looks outward, far away, and his voice falls to scarcely a whisper. "A white neck… nails like cherry blossoms… it's like the falling snow, disappearing before you can savor it. I'm lonely," his voice lingers, puzzled. "How can I be lonely? I'm not capable of feeling these things…"

The blood Ciel had drunk that afternoon seems to rise uneasily to coat the back of his tongue, and he feels as though he will be sick. He leaves the room, and no one takes note of his passing—the servants are too busy in their own grief.

He walks along the empty corridor, disgusted at Sebastian's sincerity and naîveté, disgusted by the way even a demon can express his grief so much more than he can. He does not know what to do with his own grief for it turns only to anger, and though he can admit that he misses his brother, he cannot even think that he might miss Undertaker as well. Tanaka, too, is gone, who had been so loyal to him; which of them truly has nothing left? It is not Sebastian.

His hatred and bitterness congeal.

It is easier to erase the truth than to face it, and so instead of remembering the softness of Sebastian's voice and the way he had seemed so lost, Ciel thinks only, incessantly, of his words; and by the time he has reached the solarium, grey and desolate in the ever-deepening winter, he truly _has_ become sick, and vomits blood onto the stone.

_A white neck… nails like cherry blossoms… it's like the falling snow, disappearing before you can savor it._

He remembers that month, and the way _they_ had all fawned over how pure and innocent the two were.

_Like lambs! Not yet stained_…

He holds himself and shivers, and thinks with a burst of clarity that Sebastian is, and has never been, anything more than _them_. And like _them_, he only wants one thing—defilement.

/

It haunts him.

As Ciel looks at what remains of the Sirius store of blood—a scant few bottles—he realizes that his own time is numbered. He will die quite soon, even if he rations himself closely, and then it is Sebastian that will carry out their revenge, in the name of his dead brother, and he will have been nothing to his twin, useless and tossed away in place of a base and twisted fiend.

In his bed, in the ides of December, he plans.

It is the kind of plan that depends on the fact that he knows, deep down, that he is lying to himself. He would not be able to hurt Sebastian with _this_, otherwise. It is cruel and horrible—Ah, but how he hates Sebastian. Finding the true culprits may be beyond him, but Sebastian—the one who killed Undertaker, and thus destroyed everything, Sebastian, the one who made the vile contract with his brother, and stole him away forever—Sebastian, the one who had killed him and facilitated the taking of his identity, who had rooted around in his belly for the ring, who had strung him up like a depraved puppet and opened his mouth with the demon's hideous words—_Sebastian_ he can still reach.

Thus it is that in the evening he rings the bell, and Sebastian appears: more out of curiosity than a wish to help, he knows; for Sebastian would not put out a hand to help him with anything.

He is naked, and when Sebastian appears he says, softly, "you wanted my brother, didn't you? A white neck… nails like cherry blossoms… you never got to savor him, but I'm the second-best option. It would be something to amuse ourselves with. You can pretend it is he…"

Sebastian looks down at him with utter disgust, and turns to leave; but Ciel sighs as he begins to pleasure himself, watching out of the corner of his eye, the way Sebastian is struck in his tracks, made feeble by the sight and sound. A burst of hatred inspires him—yes, yes, look! Want me terribly, and hate yourself for it, despise yourself…

He reaches one arms out and pulls Sebastian closer, kisses his unresisting mouth, and takes it all in pieces after that, one by one, as he recalls the kinder ones doing to him: piece by piece.

He will take it all, everything that is so visible in Sebastian's unprotected heart, and he will ruin it, so that his own insides will be a stranger to him.

It is no more that has been done to him, by _them_, and even by Undertaker, though he did not mean to—when he brought Ciel back a soulless monster, who could only _want_—and want his brother most of all.

.

.

.


	4. Bounded in a Nutshell

Still, the glassy horror in Sebastian's eyes surprises him.

"What's wrong?" Ciel says. "I know you enjoyed yourself… you see, you cannot lie to me…" he runs one hand upon the former butler's porcelain skin, and the demon turns aside, picking up his clothes and dressing himself. He leaves the room, and then Ciel is alone, and though he knows he has succeeded, it has not worked—he still hates Sebastian more than ever, but his revenge has backfired, he feels worse than before.

He keeps remembering the horror in Sebastian's eyes.

"It is just what he deserves," Ciel says to himself, as he closes his eyes on the scene of the crime. "He's done as bad to me—done worse…" but his voice falters.

Sebastian isn't seen by anyone in the house for nigh on a week, and when at last Ciel queries where he might be, the servants tell him he is in his room. They do not know what happened, they think it is only because of his grief, and Ciel feels a nauseous mixture of triumph and horror that they don't _know_, and never will.

He goes to the butler's room, and uses the master key to unlock the door. Deference to Sebastian's wish for privacy does not even occur to him.

There he is, sitting in the open wardrobe, under the spare uniforms, in a pile of purring cats, not moving, except his hands, which caress them fretfully.

"I see," Ciel says meanly. "Here everyone's been worried about you, and you're enjoying yourself with your pets. Do you think that little of your last promise to your master? You said you would complete his revenge and yet you're merely idling away." He reaches forward, trying to take the cat from Sebastian's hands, but Sebastian grabs his wrist with a sudden inhuman strength and the eyes that had seemed focused only on the cats are now burning into his, angry but—not burning with demonic fervor, merely _angry_, and terrified, like a man.

It surprises Ciel, and he stumbles back, his mouth suddenly dry; his limbs tremble.

He flees.

/

The Queen has sent a message, and so here they are, at the doorway; Ciel is pulling at the strings of the damned eyepatch, his disguise as Watchdog for those who knew the earl, which keep slipping over his eye when he tries to tie it; and he notices the catch in Sebastian's breath, the pained way he watches the movement.

"You must know how to tie it," Ciel says at last, abruptly, and shoves the whole thing into Sebastian's hands.

Sebastian holds the fabric with exquisite care, turns Ciel's head and ties it on deftly in one smooth motion, and when he steps back, for a moment the tenderness in his expression aches—though it is mixed deep with the terror and the bitterness.

Ciel has to bite his lip to keep from saying something awful and cruel, but the hatred is there within him, ready to boil over—and he is so _tired_ of it.

Sebastian has not said a word, since.

Ciel is growing weary of his uppity presumptuousness in the matter, but nothing can be done. They are to join a band of travelling folk who seem to be the precipitation of a change in character of the minor lords and ladies whose manors they visit—cruel people becoming suddenly generous, giving away swathes of their money and land in a way that speaks of the possibility of something dire.

Ciel introduces himself as the Undertaker's apprentice, forced to leave the city when word of the man's misdeeds were known. Sebastian is his feebleminded uncle, a mute.

That was not Ciel's idea—but Sebastian still has not said a word.

In keeping with the travelers' idea of charity, they have taken the two in, and as the pair know how to pay their way, they are not given trouble. But the bottles that fill Ciel's bag grow emptier each day, and he wonders when, on the lonely moors, he will fall asleep to not wake again.

During the day, when they walk beside the carriages, Sebastian holds a ragged kitten he had found, about to die, and which he treats as though it is his own child, feeding it from the corner of a cloth dipped in milk. The folk think well of him for it, and any unease they might have at his strangeness is forgiven.

Ciel they treat more warily, for an undertaker—even if merely an apprentice—is always too close to death.

Still, he fixes the wooden things along the way and at the houses they pass, and no one looks askanse at his cover, for which he is grateful—even his accent slips smoothly into what it ought to be, being not a nobleman, and if he thinks he hears Undertaker on every turn of his tongue, no one else will say.

And the bottles in his bag grow emptier each day; his time grows shorter as the moon in the sky is eaten and the crisp end of winter turns to the earliest days of spring.

/

_It is something about her_, Sebastian says, catching his hand and tapping on it.

It never ceases to rouse Ciel's anger. That his brother had taught the demon what had been their own secret language, and now it is doled back to him in increments he is forced to swallow; he hates Sebastian ever more, wishes he could end this farce, but Sebastian is silent.

"What," Ciel says, in a low voice. "You mean Angela?"

The former maid turns, as though she had heard him—but she is deep in conversation with another, and yards away. He's seen the ropey scars on her back when the group went down to the river one morning to bathe, and she pulled off her clothes uncaring of modesty and dove into the frigid waters. Her master used to beat her; and worse, he suspects.

_Yes_, Sebastian replies. _She's not what she seems_. He pauses. _It's strange, for I've felt something like her before; but I cannot remember where._

_Is she the culprit, then?_ Ciel replies in the same language, in deference to the subject. _We'll have to prove it, somehow; how does she act? Blackmail?_

Sebastian hesitates. _No_.

_What, then?_ Ciel presses. Sebastian does not reply.

/

They are within the manor grounds of a lord, and the production of _Hamlet_ does nothing to endear itself to Ciel. He watches from the sidelines, along with Sebastian, who sits in his rough-spun clothes on the grass at the edge of the makeshift stage, while on the other side the lords and ladies in their finery play at taking the air, and sit on thick cloth, shading themselves with lace umbrellas.

The very last bottle is nearing the dregs, and Ciel knows how to get no more blood.

Even if he were to take some from a living being, there is no way he could guarantee it would be Sirius type, and would not make him deathly ill again.

Sebastian's hair has grown longer, and wilder; it is tied by a cord, but the ragged edges of it cover his face when he leans down over the young cat that follows him wherever he goes; he is barefoot, as the mad always are—a fine foolish play.

Ciel watches Angela, who plays at Queen Gertrude and seems to notice his gaze; for as Hamlet berates her for her betrayal of his father, she stares straight at him, regardless of the audience.

He shivers, and turns aside.

"When is she going to act?" he says.

_You seem in a hurry_, Sebastian says, tapping against the exposed skin of Ciel's ankle, where his trousers are short; his ungloved hand hidden in the long grass. _The Queen is happy with our progress, is she not?_

He doesn't look up, and if Ciel didn't know that Sebastian keeps as careful track of the bottles as he does, he might believe the innocence.

As it is, he kicks down on Sebastian's fingers with his heel, grinding them into the dirt.

"You can't wait for me to die, can you?" he says, and at last lets up the boot, in case Sebastian has it in him to answer.

_I can wait as long as I must_, Sebastian says.

/

The lord, who has long been a party to the Viscount of Druitt's more _unusual_ pastimes—those involving missing young girls—suddenly finds himself giving money to the Church orphanages. It is precisely the kind of proof Ciel is looking for, if it were not for the fact that they have seen Angela do nothing. If anything at all, she has merely looked the offending lord in the eyes, which is inappropriate, but hardly evidence of wrongdoing on a grand scale.

Ciel takes his last drop of blood in the evening, and finally leaves the stables where the whole group is quartered to walk through the grounds alone. Sebastian, who is awake, does not stop him.

Ciel feels an understanding of why the animals go away from others of their kind to die—there is something too constricting about knowing it will happen where it will be made much of.

He's already died once, among fanfare; he has no wish for his second death to be of the same ilk.

It's chance that he runs into Angela as well, looking up at the sky, which is a deep black near the manor walls, far away from the few lighted windows, and covered with the brilliant seething blanket of stars.

"I apologize," Ciel says. "I didn't mean to startle you—"

Though, on second thought, she doesn't seem startled. She looks away from him again, back to the sky.

"The new moon is known as the beginning of a new cycle," she says, in her soft, melodic voice. "Some, those who have only learned the dark ways, think of it as the time when hope is lost, when despair is at its deepest—but just as surely, it is a time of beginnings."

Ciel looks up with her, and shivers to realize that it is, indeed, the new moon. He has had nothing but dark experiences in the ways of the moon, which _they_ had been so careful to track.

But he doesn't leave, struck by the thought that he might still get a confession from Angela; though he can't be sure why it seems to matter so suddenly.

"You suspect me," Angela says. "You and your lover both."

Ciel starts, and looks at her with a mix of fear and revulsion—Sebastian isn't, never was, and that she could imply something like that of the Phantomhive line—but of course he is not Phantomhive, not here and not now.

"Do you all think that of us?" he says at last.

Angela shrugs. "You have no time to waste, do you? Or you would not be here." She sits down, and gestures for Ciel to sit beside her; somehow, he does.

"I'll tell you all," she says. "I'm an angel, yes. Or was. But in my hubris I did a terrible thing, and rent myself asunder. One half of me male, the other female; two that should have been in union now separated forever. I had great plans to purify the land, and took two winding ways to accomplish it—Ash granted the wish of a high personage, while I was meant to gather the rest; save those I could, before we both razed the land.

"That was three years ago now, and I like to imagine that I've learned, if nothing else, the error of such hubris," she says. She smiles, somewhat sadly. "It is so much easier to judge when one is not among the humans; isn't it?"

"What do you think I am?" Ciel says.

Angela looks at him sadly. "A shade," she says. "A desperate wanderer. Lost. I should have pronounced you unclean, not so long ago, and tried to end you. Part of me feels it still. Ciel Phantomhive, you have always known who killed your parents—your mentor knew, and was not quiet about it; you know it too." She takes Ciel's hand in hers. "Can any of us ever rise above our sins?" she asks him. Her eyes search his, and at last she shakes her head. "Not alone."

She rises, at last, and takes one step back. "I'm sorry."

Then she is gone, and the air is growing quietly chill.

Ciel walks back to the stables and relays everything to Sebastian.

Sebastian curls his lip. _And do you know?_ he says.

Ciel is trying to piece it together; remembers times the Undertaker had talked to him, remembers what he'd seen of his brother's life. There is, of course, one obvious culprit, but as in the case of Jack the Ripper, it is precisely who his brother had never dared suspect—he cared too much about his name, his powers, and the one who had given them all to him.

Finally, Sebastian stirs. _I've remembered what I've seen like her_, he says. _The one who wears the glasses incessantly—John Brown. He was the same._

"Then is it him," Ciel says. "And the Queen, after all?"

.

.

.


	5. The Beginning

Hours later, when Ciel is already growing faint and cold, Sebastian moves closer.

_Would it satisfy you_, he asks, _if you could take your revenge, before you died?_

"Of course, it would," Ciel says. "But that is beyond my power now."

Sebastian hesitates, and finally says, _my blood is Sirius type_.

Ciel's eyelids, which have been slipping shut, open with difficulty. "What do you mean?—you aren't human; you can't have a type, surely—"

Sebastian links his black-nailed hands, grown calloused with months outdoors, and at last reaches forward again. _Because I'm a demon. Yet the body I make is as real in its elements as anything else, and if I wish for my blood to be Sirius type, that is what it will be_.

"You hate me," Ciel says, "Surely nothing would make you happier than to foil me—to deprive me of any revenge—"

Sebastian sighs. _I have no happiness, whatever I do. _

"I'd rather die," Ciel says.

_As you say, Phantomhive_. Sebastian moves away.

"No, no—I've changed my mind," Ciel says, watching the former butler, realizing suddenly that if he dies now he will never be _certain_ that their revenge is complete—and how could he, who is now the only twin to have survived, abandon his brother in such a manner? His brother may have learned the knack of it, but that is something Ciel was never able to do. To hate, yes—cruelly; to destroy; but not to let others go on without him.

So the demon holds out his arm, the blood dripping from the cut he makes with his own nails, and Ciel licks along it, feeling the warm, heady power of blood, and hating himself as he always does, and hating himself more because he is so like the demon in this moment—and the demon knows it. Sebastian smirks, watching him; and when Ciel is finally done he whispers, "what's wrong, Phantomhive? I know you enjoyed yourself."

It is chilling, to hear his voice after so long, when he'd almost convinced himself he never would again, and Ciel starts away; but he is caught by the force of Sebastian's hands.

"Let go of me, demon," he hisses, but Sebastian only chuckles.

"No," he says. "I think not. We are bound together, you and I, until we figure out this revenge, and I think I have seen your cards now, as well. I may have lost the purity of the true coin, but at least I have its counterfeit—and as long as I do not take it in my teeth, who can tell the difference?"

.

.

.


End file.
